Jason Blaha Powerbuilding Training Lower Body Day – 5-30-2025!

Today’s Training Session:
-Paused Squats: 315×3, 365×1, 385×1
-Deadlift: 500 x3
-Glute Ham Raise: 10 3×8
-Belt Squat: 200 3×8
-Belt Squat Calf Raise: 200 3×10
-Reverse Hyper Extension: 220 3×12
-Hanging Leg Raise: 2 sets
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Hey everybody, it’s Jason Blaha here once again. It is time for a lower body day. But a quick reminder, if you guys will please click like down below, be greatly appreciated. If you are not following or subscribe, please do so. And if you guys will be kind enough to drop me a comment down below, I would also greatly appreciate that. So, cuts going pretty well. Um, dropped two more pounds overnight, down to 218. So, the cardio is working, the diet’s working. And so, in spite of the fact that I’ve increased carbs and increased salt, um I’m down a total of four lbs in what about two and a half weeks? Is that what it’s been? Two weeks? Two and a half weeks. Uh so, we’re making progress. Keep in mind, I gained weight initially when I added cardio, added carbs. I shot up like 5 lbs. Lost all of that. Dropped two finally below, then two more. Um so, it’s coming along. So, what I’m doing with the training, guys, at this point, I am literally just going to try to hold on to my muscle and strength since I’m I’m bro dieting it up. I’m talking we’re straight up a chicken, broccoli, brown rice, Greek yogurt guy right now. Um, I mean, there’s a little bit of other stuff in there, but that is more or less what I’m eating. We’re doing at this point it was two plus hours of cardio. Now, it’s been like three plus for pretty much a week almost. Um, again, just going to get leaner, right? I’m just going to get leaner. Let’s just really really do it this time because I’ve gotten as lean as I’ve wanted to before each time that people were like, “I thought you were going to get lean.” I’m like, “I did get lean by normal people’s standards.” But no, this time let’s go ahead and just really cut and then I can rebuild strength again afterwards. So, I did pause squats. Like, you know what? I don’t need to do a bunch of reps on squats. Let’s not beat my back up. Let’s do pause work because I’m going to get extra reps on the belt squat. The belt squat is going to be my my real quad stimulus, but I want to keep that strength in those deep positions because I gain muscle like pause squats make my thighs bigger. So, I did a a pause triple of 315, then we ramped up, did a nice trying to do a 5second pause. Um, and just come up and I can just build this back up. And this will again kind of keep me in those positions to where I can get tight. I could have done more weight. So, I want to just kind of keep it solid, keep it reasonable, but get it up into the 400s coming up and just try to keep it there because if I can do some long pauses with 400 plus, that’ll keep my strength and positioning and it will give some hypertrophy because of those longer pauses, especially with that rep work leading into it and then we’ll usually use the belt squat. Um, so the idea here, I’m trying to keep overall fatigue low. So, same thing, deadlifts, one good set of deadlifts, did 500 for a triple. Um, grip did feel a little little weak there. I can tell that’s from the fatigue from the cutting. Uh, the grip did feel a little little weak on that. U, but I’m also doing my hanging leg roses. I may have to throw some extra grip work in. I thought, what the heck? You know, we got loose skin and everything, but uh, I’ll just do these from the side where you can see all of it. And I think that’s good when I’m cutting. Being able to see that in real time and let’s seeing how it tightens up over the weeks might be interesting. So, let me just show it. Right. You can kind of see it there. Um, so I did sets of eight on the glute ham raise and then we superseted it with the belt squat. Um, then I did some calf raises and I superseted my reverse hypers with the hanging leg raises. So what we’re doing here with this um, this is going to be most of my quad and hamstring work. Obviously the deadlifts count. Obviously the squats are counting. Like even though that’s a very low volume on those squat and deadlifts, there is going to be some hypertrophic stimulus, right? Especially in the total of the workout. I think people forget that. It’s like, was one set count? Well, yeah, if you do one set of three different exercises that hit a muscle, that’s that counts as three sets, guys. But they’re they’re pretty hard sets there. So, again, did did the pause triple then the pause singles, but those long pauses are a little different, right? It gives a different quality of rep. Um, but I like the pause squats. And I feel like because I I was a little shallow on depth sometimes on squats. Let’s just do deep pause squats again. I like doing them anyways in my training. Um, and they’re easy on recovery and that’s the main thing when I’m cutting. And they’ll help me hold on to some muscle. They’ll help me hold on to the the neural drive on the squat and then I can hammer the other stuff, right? I can hammer the other stuff um to continue to create a hypertrophic stimulus. And the idea you want to try to gain muscle even on a cut like normally I tell people, yeah, you can gain muscle on a slow cut. It’s been shown in labs repeatedly. I’m not slow cutting anymore. My deficit’s at least a thousand a day right now. So, it’s it’s a fairly fairly aggressive at the moment. I may slow it down, but I need that I need some initial serious fat loss. So, some of that we have to look at and go, can I just hold on to my muscle, right? Keep in mind, I’m still eating 3,000 plus calories, but I’m just I’m burning through 4,000 plus, probably well over 4,000 at this point a day. So, uh the idea here, let’s hold on to what we have. bumping the protein a little more, making sure I’m getting at least 250 grams. We can argue I may not need that much for retaining muscle, but it’s certainly not going to hurt. So, again, keeping the protein high. Um, all the food is whole foods, clean foods. Again, brown rice being a big staple, chicken being a big staple. Um, lots of vegetables. I’m trying to eat a pound of broccoli every day, and it’s got spinach and other stuff in there. So, my goal is about one pound of broccoli a day. It’s kind of my baseline. So, we’re keeping all the vegetables high. Um, so the idea here, uh, belt squats, taking them deep, right? I’m doing the belt squats deep. I want the deepest range of motion possible, trying to keep that quad stimulus high so that I can hold on to my legs while doing all this cardio. Plus, that helps me with energy. If we don’t lose muscle in our legs and we keep a good training response in our quads and and glutes and calves and everything, that’s more calories burned doing our cardio. So again, um, taking these through longer ranges of motion. So what I’m doing with these movements, again, a lot of the stuff I’ve done has been not every exercise, but a bunch of the exercises I’m really focusing on deep stretches. I’m focusing on lengthening positions. It doesn’t have to be everything. You know, my barbell curls don’t have to be, my laterals don’t necessarily have to be. My delts don’t have to be, but the squats are, the belt squats are. This is glute ham race. Okay. So, the idea, same thing with belt squats. I want those belt squats a grass. So, yeah, I’m having to use only 200 pounds. Yeah, I’ve done 300 for like six, but they’re not this deep. I’m probably getting five inches almost, probably four to five inches deeper, right? So, we’re going way below parallel. We are literally going as far as my knee joint will let me go. My hamstrings hitting the calf. So, we’re taking them deep and trying to keep that that tension on the on the quad, right? Anything that we have to do to retain muscle because we’re just going to burn through fat with all the cardio. But retaining muscle, not only do we not lose gains, but every pound of muscle you don’t lose is more fat you lose. Always keep that in mind when cutting. Have to find that balance of going, okay, we’ve got to hold on to the lean tissue. So, the cap phrases, I’m like, um, some people had suggested this and and I think they were right. I’m like, this is where I do sometimes say, you know, some people do have good ideas. And I’ve always heard you can do calf raises on this. And I mentioned it. I had some people say, “No, I do mine. It actually is less loading than than what you’re doing with the bar.” So, it’s easier on recovery. So, then I can come in and do some calf work. And it was a little awkward to set up, but I think I found the groove. Because I didn’t put on shoes. It kind of hurt my feet a little. So, I have I might have to put shoes on for this next time. But, it was fast to set up. Really easy to do. I just did the same setup as my other and just used that plate. I had to find a good spot to where to put it, you know, had to put find a good spot to put it. But we just did sets of 10 here. And yeah, my calf’s got got a good stimulus. So again, try to hold on to the calves, too, right? So calf muscle calf muscle is going to carry over to more calories burned walking, more calories burning the bike. We got to hold on to all of it. I have pretty dang good big calves. So let’s keep it. Let’s use it to my advantage. Let’s make sure we don’t lose those calves. Make sure we don’t lose those quads. Those are the muscles that are burning the most calories during the cardio. So, this is going to be part of the key to to just getting leaner. Um, you guys heard some of the streams and stuff, but yeah. So, again, this is giving me sufficient volume depending on how if if we don’t even count the squats or the deadlifts, which they obviously count. They count as at least one full set of each. We’re still doing three direct sets for hamstrings, three direct sets for quads, glutes here. And then I’m doing the reverse hypers, which are also going to hit the hamstrings. again, hamstrings, glutes, all that. So then I did super sets, three sets of reverse hypers, two sets of hanging leg raises. I I skipped the third set. I’m just like, man, I’m just tired. This is a lot. Uh we did three last time, too. This time that still gives me five sets of hanging leg raises. I I probably do need to most weeks try to get as many of them in as I really can because again, my grip felt a little squishy on the deadlift. That grip work’s not gonna hurt. And I may have to start adding some forearm work in. We literally might have to I might have to find a place to fit it in. might be on this day, might be after the leg raises, I might need to start doing um some wrist curls and stuff because again, I need to make sure the grip stays okay with all of this, right? We’ve got to keep it on point. So, I did my reverse hypers. Notice I’m controlling them. I’m really focusing on using the lighter weight and really controlling them as much as possible. Considering they’re all roller bearings, you have to remember that with reverse hypers, guys. You’re never going to remove all of the swing. Okay? Someone says, “I could.” It’s going to take you three minutes to do one set because it’s going to take 10 seconds to make it stop swinging between every single rep. So, you’re literally looking at 10 seconds per rep. So, you just do the best you can and it’s going to you want it to swing forward a little, but this is very, very controlled. It’s controlled as I’ve ever done them. So, again, same thing. I still feel the lower back really effectively. Um, so again, just trying to take everything and say, what’s the minimum weight I need to use to make this all hard enough with enough tension to keep the muscle I have? So, I’m trying to not beat my body into the ground. Same thing if I do a triple of 500 deadlift, that’s enough. Trying to not beat my body into the ground. That’s the idea because I’ve got to recover from all the cardio and I’m in a big deficit. So, again, be careful of overtraining, especially when you’re using a lot of cardio to cut. You’ve got to be aware of potential risks of overtraining because you don’t have the same recovery resources. So think you have to think about those things. But we’re still doing pretty high volumes overall things considered and then lots of the cardio. But pretty happy with today’s workout. The pause squats all went really well. I’ll probably work them up a bit heavier obviously. Uh so I hope it’s been informative and I’ll talk to you guys and gals next time.